


Song of an Odd Little Dax

by sareli



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Nonbinary Character, Other, Prose Poem, Trill Culture (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26026030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sareli/pseuds/sareli
Summary: Jadzia knew she was a woman, Ezri is not so sure.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Song of an Odd Little Dax

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the concept of Paige Lewis' nonbinary epic "YAEL" and also an atla fic called "Son of the Firelord", both of which explore figures in well-known media as nonbinary characters and both of which made me stop and go "wow, we can do that??" and then I met ezri and decided I wanted to try my hand. 
> 
> idk how long this will ultimately be but here is part 1 because I got stuck

Ezri wakes on the operating table with eight sets of eyes, the overhead light prismaticized by its journey down their optic nerve. Ezri turns their eight heads and blinks their eight eyes, spiderlike, feeling the shutter of each psychic eyelid.

Their stomachs roil as they sit up, their brains threatening to slosh right over the edges of their skulls.

"Ensign Tigan! How are you feeling?"

"I think it's Dax now," Ezri says, and promptly empties their stomachs.

***

Later, Ezri will count them over and over again:

Lela Tobin Emony Audrid Torias Curzon Jadzia (…Joran!) 

Lela Tobin Emony Audrid Torias Joran Curzon Jadzia.

  1. Lela 2. Tobin 3. Emony 4. Audrid 5. Torias 6. Joran 7. Curzon 8. Jadzia.



All there, all accounted for. So why does it feel like they are missing something?

Ezri counts again.

***

It is not until much later that Ezri realizes they have forgotten to count themself.

***

Dax’s friends all mean well, but none of them _get_ it.

The way Worf gives Ezri a wide berth because he can’t get past the shape of their body holding his dead wife’s memories because it’s too much, Ezri can’t help but wonder how he would treat them if they were the same shape as their brothers, if he would be quite so distant then.

The way Kira smiles at them, like the both of them know something nobody else does, except Ezri doesn’t know how to explain to Kira that she’s the only one who knows whatever it is she and Jadzia used to _know_ anymore.

Ezri is not sure Julian has even noticed _what_ kind of body they have, but somehow that doesn’t make things any better, because all they know is the thousand-yard stare he gets when he looks at them, like they’re not _there_ , and they know all too well it’s because he can still see Jadzia’s ghost just over their shoulder.

Benjamin comes closest.

“I’m not like Jadzia,” Ezri blurts out to him one day.

He quirks an eyebrow. “I know that, Old Man.”

At first, the moniker made them itch, because they thought it was just another case of being forever filtered through the fog of Jadzia, but now it tickles something deep inside of them, of Ezri and Dax _both_. Ezri bites back a ludicrous grin, because this is Serious.

“I mean I’m not a woman. Not like she was. Not like anyone was. Or a man, for that matter.”

Benjamin nods.

“Ah. Shall I stop calling you ‘Old Man,’ then?”

Ezri finally breaks out into that grin, despite themself.

“Not for a second.”

***

Garak, of all people, gives Ezri their first nickname.

“You are an odd little Dax, aren’t you?” He had said, quirking an eyeridge at them when they had come to his shop that second time armed with a holosuite program.

After their whole ordeal was over, he took to calling them "the Little Dax" in passing, like when Ezri would come to take their seat at the lunch table.

_"Ah, it's the Little Dax, come to grace our presences."_

_"Hello Little Dax, and how are you today?"_

_"Dear Little Dax, how perceptive you are."_

Once, Ezri caught a slight frown between Julian's eyebrows, just after a sweeping "Farewell, _Little Dax_ " and a graceful retreat.

"What was that look?"

He tries to play dumb, but utterly fails as soon as Ezri rolls their eyes at him.

"It's nothing, I swear, it just reminded me for a second of how he used to talk to Ziyal, that's all. _Young Ziyal,_ he called her."

Jadzia had known _of_ Dukat's daughter, of course, had maybe laid eyes on her across the Promenade once or twice, but that was it. They had never spoken. But what Dax knows, unequivocally, is that what happened to Ziyal and what happened to Jadzia were woven from the same threads.

"She was a lovely girl, against all odds. You would have liked her, everyone did. Garak doted on her like she was his own."

Ezri tears in two directions: wonder at the implication that they are someone's own, someone's Dax, and despair at the prospect of being seen as just another _lovely girl._

***

Jadzia knew she was a woman, Ezri is not so sure.

Jadzia felt grounded in her body, knew where it ended and she began, could pull on all the little strings to make it work, a choreographed harmony to everything about her, like the harmony between the her in her head and the Dax in her belly.

Jadzia knew it all so well there could be enough space inside her for something else, it was all she wanted at the end, her last thought as the world went red was to despair at the empty space she had carved out, ready, waiting, warm enough that Dax, too, could feel its radiance.

Ezri has a body like Jadzia’s, a fact they can’t quite seem to hold in their head for more than a few seconds, the thought leaves a hole in the sand of their mind that is then almost immediately swept away by wave after wave of memories leaving each their own strangeness in Ezri’s mouth—

On one side: Curzon Torias Tobin and Joran   
with a bitter undercurrent

And

On the other: Audrid Emony Lela and Jadzia   
with a subtle sour tang

and then to wash it all down, nothing, the queer and unqualitative nothing in which Ezri has been suspended all their life, the nothing that intrigued Norvo, confounded Janel, and irritated their mother.

Ezri is

Ezri

Who is Ezri?

_("You are an odd little Dax, aren't you?")_

Ezri is not so sure.

***

If Ezri were a different kind of Trill, maybe they would see this as a blessing, as a sign that their whole existence had been leading up to this, to being the perfect colorless medium for Dax to come along and swim in.

Unfortunately for pretty much everyone involved, Ezri is the kind of Trill who instead can't help but feel like they should have been able to opt out.

***

Ezri had always imagined that they would be able to feel Dax inside of them. Well, not _Dax_ specifically, but a symbiont. And, well. Not _them_ specifically. But it had always seemed a given that a joined Trill would be able to feel another alive thing wriggling in their belly. It was pretty similar to how Ezri imagined pregnancy, come to think of it, yet another symbiotic ritual that Ezri had never been able to quite picture for themself.

But Ezri cannot feel Dax, not even when they prod their fingers into their abdomen where the symbiont should be. And not when they close their eyes and rummage through the debris inside their skull, there is no little worm-voice for Ezri to pick out, no matter how hard they listen.

***

Somehow, even Ezri would never have imagined Joining to be quite this lonely.


End file.
